Dalla balera al dancing playlist

From dance halls to clubs

Before the arrival of discos, people danced to the music of small orchestras and ensembles in places that have been enshrined in the history of entertainment in Italy: dance halls appealed especially to the humbler classes in rural areas and the suburbs of the great cities, while dance clubs and nightclubs attracted a more affluent crowd. Even if the music that was played in the two types of locales was often the same, the repertoire of the popular dance halls preferred Italian dances (or what were thought to be so), such as mazurkas or waltzes, while the more upscale clubs offered foreign novelties, introducing new dances from North and South America that catered to more cosmopolitan tastes. This collection alternates between tango and mazurka, rumba and samba, bolero and the Lambeth Walk, the dance which took London by storm in the late 1930s. The protagonists include a number of great voices of the interwar era, such as Meme Bianchi, Elena Beltrami, Luciano Benevene and Vittorio Belleli, with the Angelini Orchestra.

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